Surrey Council Health Committee Tory Councillor, John Butcher: “Force seriously ill people out of Surrey to push up house prices”

Surrey County Council Health Committee Tory Councillor, John Butcher: “Force seriously ill people out of Surrey to push up house prices”

From Political Scrapbook blog -June 1st, 2012.
A Tory councillor on Surrey’s health committee has called for seriously ill people to be forced out of the county. John Butcher has suggested those with “self-inflicted morbidity” should be “encouraged” to “move away from Surrey” – in the name of pushing up house prices.

Butcher wants groups such as smokers —  referred to as the “self-inflicted” — to be offered slower NHS treatment so that they will be forced to move: “This factor would attract more ‘other’ patients to come to live in Surrey – and that would push up house prices here.”

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any more sick, he ventures that this would benefit the Tories in elections: “any political party that seeks to pander to the needs of the self-inflicted unhealthy, and to win their votes, will suffer twofold … mortality will ensure that its voters will be much fewer in number than the ‘others’”

 Councillor Butcher’s email, which went round Surrey Council like wildfire before being leaked, is reproduced in full below:

1 Please pass on my apology for absence from the Surrey HOSC meeting on 24 May 2012, but I have a hospital appointment that day, and it has already been postponed once.

2 Because of the economic catastrophe facing the capitalist world, the NHS, that is a Marxist organisation, is bound to fail – like Greece.

The government’s efforts to ‘improve’ it are merely a postponement of that failure, which will arise from ever-increasing demand for, and the unit costs of, healthcare and the ever-decreasing national wealth available to afford those demands and costs, through taxation or otherwise.

Politicians who support the diversion of increasingly scarce fiscal resources into propping up the NHS, without taking measures to curb demand, not only accelerate its eventual demise but allow more important demands on the public purse to go unmet, with serious adverse consequences to the people. It will be the people who suffer from the collapse of the NHS – but they will have only themselves to blame – for voting in politicians who promise to improve the NHS regardless of other factors.

3 One way of saving the NHS is to encourage patients to take very much more care of themselves, with penalties on those who won’t do that. If the NHS in Surrey were to be run on the basis that patients with self-inflicted morbidity (mainly – smoking, alcohol, narcotics, obesity) and injury (dangerous activities) are, following due warning, placed in a much slower-moving queue for healthcare than ‘other’ patients, this would encourage the self-inflicted to move away from Surrey, to areas where there is no differentiation between patients on the grounds of their contribution towards their condition.

And it would deter the self-inflicted from coming to live in Surrey. Over time, that would result in the healthcare for the ‘other’ patients in Surrey being significantly better than the average national level for all patients, as the resources deployed to the self-inflicted would be very much reduced.

This factor would attract more ‘other’ patients to come to live in Surrey – and that would push up house prices here – assuming that planning controls remain similar to now.

4 Eventually the self-inflicted patients would end up living in ‘equality’ areas that are dominated by politicians who pander to their needs, thus driving more ‘other’ patients out of those areas, as healthcare there will be badly affected by the over-dominance of the self-inflicted.

These ‘other’ patients would move into areas, such as, hopefully, Surrey, where ‘other’ patients are not nearly so adversely affected. Eventually the country will be sharply divided into two types of area:

4.1 the ‘equality’ ones, where the self-inflicted unhealthy are treated the same as all patients, and 4.2 the ‘others’, such as, hopefully, Surrey.

Average life expectancy will be substantially lower (by, say, 20 years) in the ‘equality’ areas than in the ‘others’. This may mean that ‘other’ patients moving out of ‘equality’ areas may have to live in a less desirable dwelling, because of house price differentials, but that is a trade-off, that they can choose, with healthcare differentials between the two types of area.

Such house price differentials already apply for schooling, with houses on one side of a catchment boundary being worth a lot more than houses on the other side of it.

Indeed, the perception that the gap in those prices between those two types of healthcare area will grow substantially will encourage the ‘other’ patients in those ‘equality’ areas to move out of them sooner, lest they see their dwelling there becoming worthless.

5 Thus, any political party that seeks to pander to the needs of the self-inflicted unhealthy, and to win their votes, will suffer twofold:

5.1 mortality will ensure that its voters will be much fewer in number than the ‘others’, and

5.2 by concentrating its voters into particular areas, that party will never be able to win enough seats to dominate Parliament.
Regards John Butcher.
18 Bramble Rise
Cobham
Surrey
KT11 2HP
jvcbutcher@btinternet.com
Tel: 07899 891685

The VOAG investigates Surrey University’s NUS Kickbacks. Now that’s entertainment!

Now that’s entertainment!

The Voice of Anti-Capitalism in Guildford is always going to stand up against cuts. But disturbing news has reached us from the University of Surrey.

Could it really have been necessary for the University to have spent over £90,000 in one hotel alone, on entertaining over the last year? I realise that visiting professors often need to be accommodated, but crikey £90,000 is a lot of accommodation.

This staggering figure has been spent on events like entertaining around forty people at the “Royal Economica Annual Social”, at a cost of nearly £5,000. A similar amount was spent on a jolly for the Post Graduate Medical School. Even “9-5” meetings are costing the University over £2,500 a time – just for the privilege of chatting in posh surroundings with a few sandwiches at lunch time.

The most disturbing news was that Student Union officers have also been beneficiaries of the University’s generosity. Over £2,500 has been spent on entertaining NUS officers at just one hotel alone, over the last few months. Several officers have even stayed overnight at the University’s expense.

The VOAG is beginning to wonder whether these little treats, which are thrown to the union sabbatical, are connected in any way to their unwillingness to campaign on behalf of students. Is their deep conservatism in any way influenced by a three-course meal and an occasional night out at the University’s expense?

Perhaps it’s time for student officers to be ‘scrutinised’. Perhaps they should be forced to declare any benefits they receive over and above their salaries.

In the midst of so many occupations, demonstrations and protests, The Voice Of Anti-Capitalism in Guildford finds it hard to believe Surrey University could remain so quiet.

Just up the road in Egham, the Royal Holloway University has seen an unprecedented campaign against fees and cuts. They regularly hold vibrant meetings and workshops, and have organised several occupations and protests. They also discuss wider issues, host debates, and join with other groups in the community to organise against the cuts. The Royal Holloway has just elected a socialist to be the next president of their union.

If Royal Holloway University is the norm, Surrey University must be the exception. The Student Union reluctantly booked coaches to take students to the NUS Demonstration in London on 10^th November. The demonstration was officially supported by the NUS, so they felt obliged to book coaches, but they did nothing to publicise their free transport.

In similar fashion, the University’s Student Union reluctantly agreed to support a lunch-time demonstration on the 24^th November, “National Day Of Action”. A small lunch-time meeting outside the student union was their answer to the wave of protests elsewhere across the country that day. The union did nothing to inform students of what was being planned and even kept it out of the student newspaper.

Students at Royal Holloway, Surrey University’s nearest neighbour occupied their university – while a thousand students demonstrated outside Kingston University, Surrey’s other close neighbour.

In a quiet meeting behind closed doors with two student activists, just prior to the November 24^th protest, union officers made it clear they did not want to see a campaign against fees and cuts on the campus. They said they would not support a campaign or provide it any material assistance.

The student’s response to their union’s implacable refusal to campaign has been muted, those students that presented themselves as activists have shied away from a confrontation with the union clique.

However it has been shown up and down the country that where there has been a principled response to education cuts and rises in fees, campaigns have always gained popular support among students.

The VOAG is watching!   The VOAG is everywhere!